Expletive

expletive







Y

[ek-spli-tiv]

1. 填充詞

2. 咒罵語



D



–noun 

1. an interjectory word 

or 

expression, frequently profane; an exclamatory oath. 



2. a syllable, word, or phrase serving to fill out.

3. Grammar. a word considered as regularly filling the syntactic (按照句法的) position of another, as it in [It] is his duty to go, or there in [There] is nothing here. 



–adjective 

4. Also, expletory. added merely to fill out a sentence or line, give emphasis, etc.: Expletive remarks [padded] the speech. 





C



EXPLETIVE 1  

 

is related to EXPLETIVE (2) in that each refers to something essentially empty of meaning inserted into an utterance. In Expletive (1) that "empty" addition is a profanity or an obscenity—an oath: That dog is no [damned] good. [Hell], I didn’t know she was there. 



Most swearwords are also called expletives. Because they mean so little, you do not need to use them often, if at all, and the more use they get, the emptier they become; note how debased the currency of words like hell and damn has become these days. See SWEAR.



EXPLETIVE 2 

 

like EXPLETIVE (1), is an essentially empty word or phrase inserted into a sentence. It too adds little or nothing to meaning but sometimes fills a useful structural or stylistic purpose. Hence a dummy subject such as there in [There] is another sailboat is an expletive (2). 



The adverb there is always readily distinguished from the expletive there; the adverb comes either first or at the very end of the clause (the adverbs are in boldfaced type): [There] there is another sailboat. There is another sailboat [there]. See DUMMY SUBJECTS. 





　

Seething with acidic ill will and unmitigated vitriol, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? remains one of the cinema's most honest, affecting trips down the [corpse]-strewn path of [marital] dysfunction. 



Adapted for the screen from Edward Albee's play (deemed the "best American play of the last decade" by The New York Times), it was a scathing, uncompromising drama that on its release earned almost as much controversy as kudos. 



Much of this controversy [emanated] from the filmmakers' refusal to delete the expletives



--scatological and otherwise--that marked the original play. Controversy aside, Who's Afraid represented the remarkably accomplished movie directing debut of Mike Nichols and featured spectacular performances. 



The only film at that point in history to have its entire main cast nominated for Academy Awards, Who's Afraid elicited Oscar-winning turns [from] Elizabeth Taylor and Sandy Dennis. 





　

George (Richard Burton) is an alcoholic college professor; Martha (Oscar-winner Elizabeth Taylor) is his virago of a wife. George and Martha know just how to push each other's buttons, with George having a special advantage: he need only mention the couple's son to send Martha into orbit. 



This evening, the couple's guests are Nick (George Segal), a junior professor, and Honey (Sandy Dennis), Nick's child-like wife. After an evening of sadistic (and sometimes perversely hilarious) "fun and games," the truth about George and Martha's son comes to light. 



First staged on Broadway in 1962 with Uta Hagen and Arthur Hill, Edward Albee's play was adapted for the screen by Ernest Lehman, who managed to retain virtually all of Albee's scatological [epithets] (this was the first American film to feature the expletive "goddamn"). 





appellative 

1. a descriptive name or designation

2. a common noun

[Box Office Poison] was a later appellative

the appellative [function] of some primitive rites. 

epithet

1. to label or characterize, sobriquet

2. abuse invectively, expletive (interjectory)

He actually deserves that overused epithet "the last movie star."

Richard [the Lion-Hearted] is an epithet of Richard I.  

All three are symbolically [annihilated] by Jared, who [ravages] her while grunting [sexist] and [racist] epithets in her ear.



solipsism

Gallo has limited himself to the most proudly [solipsistic] subjects.

And that anguished [solipsism] seems to be, at least in part, the movie's subject.

trope

any literary or rhetorical device as metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, and irony

the movie is a veritable scrapbook of [tropes] from the heyday of art film. 

The brief return to Israel at pic's end [contains] one rapid [visual] trope that may pass many auds by.

evict

evince

manifest

yet another movie that [evinces] the filmmaker's obsession with fraternity, not to mention Irene Jacob's face.

Umlaut